
Bank Windhoek ups the ante
Bank Windhoek Namibia Holdings, at the presentation of its financial results for the year at Safari Hotel, last week, announced that it will be launching a new product soon.
Managing Director, Christo de Vries said that the bank will bring to market something that they believe is a good offering in September.
De Vries was mum on the actual offering but said that it will significantly increase the company’s competitiveness. “To a large extent our customers are happy with what we are doing as the macro group aims to better understand the current market.”
“The future direction of Bank Windhoek will be investing in technology to address customer experience and expansion of service offerings,” de Vries said.
He also announced that the bank has hired consultants for expansion in its new approach to what he said is a profit-people-planet approach as it continues to invest in technology as a customer value proposition. An employee value proposition through leadership and talent creation is also under way.
The bank increased its non-interest income by 19. 4% to N$8119.9 million from N$679.7 million in 2014.
“Our focus in the coming year will remain on our customer-centric strategy and culture where by we continue to differentiate ourselves through our unique service offering and customer experience.”
This increase is mainly due to growth in transaction volumes and income from trading activities, cards and electronic channels.
Sustainability and consistency is key on the agenda for the bank as it has no desire to get its cost-income ration low as it made consistent improvement over the past 5 years. Growth in non-interest income increased from 39 to 40.2 % with non interest income increasing zero cash handling fees impacting on transactional contribution growth in non-interest income which was diversified.
The interest in comprehensive income offsets operation income as the increase in comprehensive income from 2013 to 2014 is up N$71 million.
Growth in loans and advances slightly exceeds local credit growth except for one isolated case of a delinquent loan that the bank said should not be seen as a trend but an exception.